Thursday, Dec 01, 2011 at 10:14
This flushing of tanks and spray gear is a much bigger issue than some people may think.
A mate of mines brother runs a quite large line marking business and does all sorts of work including highways in QLD, nothern NSW and NT.
His highway trucks will mark one or two lines to the right of the truck and one line to the left of the truck.
all run from the same preasurising equipment and the same tank......thus he can mark one side of a two lane highway in one pass.
the amount of paint involved is simply vast, you could probaly paint 3 rooms and a hall with the amount of paint that comes out when they purge the lines on these trucks.
the marking truck has an huge tank ( like thousands of litres), and on highway runs, he usess chase trucks to keep the supply up to the marking truck.
The amount of waste and mess involved in cleaning these things is likewise immense, so they tend to keep the thing continuously marking as long as they can so they don't have to clean the thing.
AND of course these days the greenies would not just let them clean out anywhere........they would have to go to a facility where all the contaminants could be captured and "properly" disposed of.
Just getting a sufficient supply of paint to a remote section of highway is a logistic issue on its own.
marking 1 yellow line would either mean a full clean and another pass or two at that section of road, a second vehicle and chase team, or a truck with two colours and two chase teams one for each colour.
a two colour truck would then only go half as far when marking a single line.
On the larger open highways we have, the costs with be considerable.
Arround town most of the marking is done by what amounts to oversized go carts that may carry 200 ish litres..so changing colours is less of an issue, and there is more lines in a given area so having one cart for white and one for yellow is less of an issue.
Raised thermoplastic lines are far far better than any of the conventional line paints, they are more visable in all weather as they stand up off the road and they have that tactile property...and they are far more durable
This bloke has machines that do that too....but it is a lot more expensive....there is a lot of it about but the authorities don't have the $$$$ to do it everywhere.
OH... :) on an environmental note, most
bright yellow paint contains lead, if you want a
bright yellow paint that does not contain lead, that gets a lot more expensive.......I just threw that one in, because I am sure someone will have raised it somewhere.
Just be thankfull you have a white line to show the edge of the road, its not that long ago that thousands of Km of main highways had nothing but a centreline.
It only since the 90s' that I have seen a campaign of extending the verges and marking the left hand boundries of a great many two lane highways.....on quite a lot of roads you can see where the verge has been extended, only then did they have somewhere to mark the lift hand boundry.
cheers
AnswerID:
471423
Follow Up By: caseh - Thursday, Dec 01, 2011 at 10:35
Thursday, Dec 01, 2011 at 10:35
Hallo Bantam.
You're onto it!
I travel a lot in WA and ninety percent of the roads in Western Australia don't have any paint at all. But than again, 90% of the roads in this state are unsealed (lol)
Just be thankfull the roads get painted at all. There are lots of countries where this is not the case.
And yes, here in NZ yellow also means no
parking.
cheers, Case.
FollowupID:
746064
Follow Up By: Bazooka - Thursday, Dec 01, 2011 at 11:29
Thursday, Dec 01, 2011 at 11:29
Good explanation Bantam. I'd suggest that it's not just 'greenies' who expect industry to look after the environment though. Paint disposal's a large and growing problem in the suburbs.
FollowupID:
746070